 On the 28th and 29th of March 2009 the UMLP employees visited the day centre in Odessa for kids and teenagers aged between 5 and 18 from dysfunctional families, which is supported by a social fund called “Zhyvaya Nadezhda”. This centre has been working for 6 years already. Today there are 40 children who attend the centre on a regular basis. All these kids have similar lives. In their families they face poverty, violence, neglect, drug and alcohol addiction and other problems. Such unhealthy conditions affect their intellectual development and cause physiological stress. The day centre provides these kids with psychological and social support as well as assistance with homework from qualified teachers, free meals and various educational and entertaining activities, meant to discover and develop their talents and stimulate creativity. The chief aim is to establish a stable relationship with the children in order to give them a much better chance of coping with their current life and developing an alternative to what they have now and to prevent them from going on the streets. Many children, who visit the centre, have remained or returned to their families, successfully graduated or continue to study in school.
 Our purpose was not just to donate some money, but to share every day life with these kids, to give attention, which they often lack. During the first day we visited the dolfinarium, after which everybody enjoyed cooking lunch together. The first half of the next day was allocated to specially designed financial workshop, when all children, split into teams, got nuts and bolts of financial literacy, which was both fun and education. Such workshop was aimed at developing basic money managing skills, so that the children are prepared to take the challenges of managing their finances and make right decisions in adult life in order to be financially independent. For children from dysfunctional families managing money is a crucial lesson, since, as a rule, they often not only lack parental guidance in the area of financial literacy, but also have no positive successful example to follow. After lunch the brain work gave place to body training, when everyone took part in outdoor sport contests.
When communicating with these kids we were pleasantly surprised how friendly and outgoing they are. It is very important that they integrate well with each other and have a sense of belonging to one community.
 We are happy to give our effort in making the lives of these children better and we are going to continue doing our best. The main target we want to achieve is give such children basic financial education and to raise their environmental awareness. At the moment the similar project in Western Ukraine is being organised.
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